Greetings, road trip dreamers!

Welcome to the first issue of Dreaming!  We hope to keep you updated and interested in traveling.  We’ll be mostly discussing road trips and long term travel, but will branch out into other areas as the mood strikes us.  So come along and see what we’ve been up to, and what’s going on in the road tripping world.

Phil  and  Carol  White

ForeWord Magazine names Live Your Road Trip Dream a Book of the Year Finalist in the Travel Category

Well, we didn't place in the top three places, but after seeing the largest publishers convention in the world, we feel honored to have been a finalist! 

Did you know that there were 195,000 NEW books released in 2004?  Everything from "little old us" to the likes of Simon & Shuster and Random House.  Talk about feeling insignificant....

Thanks to all of you for your positive thoughts on our trip to New York.

We leave for our dream trip on Friday of next week!

(Note:  Daniel bought his copy of the book in January!  Best wishes as they start their journey!  -- Phil and Carol)

My husband and I are still working but as soon as we retire we want to go all over the states. We have a 26' airstream. Presently we go somewhere within a couple of hours drive 2-3 weekends a month.

Looking forward to reading your book.

Can't get the reservation that you want from the 800 reservation service? Always call the local number. Many times they have rooms/camp sites/tickets available that aren't shown on the national reservation systems.

-- Joanna Sawyer, Wilsonville, Oregon

What’s up with the gas prices?

(excerpted from a recent press release)

“The good news is that there is no reason to cower in the corner of your RV trying to avoid the gasoline bogeyman” asserts Carol White, author of Live Your Road Trip Dream – Travel for a year for the cost of staying home.  “While none of us are thrilled about the new reality of gas prices, this is not a reason to cancel your travel plans, particularly if you are planning that dream trip of a lifetime.”

White, who along with her husband Phil, took off and traveled the country for a year in their Pleasure-Way class B motorhome, know more than a little about how much it costs to travel for an extended period.  When they budgeted for their trip initially, they planned on an average of $1.75 a gallon for gas.  When they returned, 37,500 miles and a year later, their actual average cost had been $1.56 a gallon.  They paid as high as $2.35 a gallon in California, and as little as $1.22 in Georgia.  "Gas prices were fluctuating like crazy then also, and we weren't sure what to really expect, but we did know that the price of gas wasn’t going to prevent us from getting out and seeing our great country”, Carol confirmed.  “We knew that in the overall scope of trip expenses, this was not going to be a ‘deal breaker’ for us.”

“As it turned out, at $1.56 average over the year, it represented only five percent of our total budget and it was only our fifth largest expenditure”, Phil added.

Carol went on to update their information, “We recently recalculated our actual budget, using $2.25 as the average price over the same 37,500 miles, and it only moved the expense to eight percent of the total cost, and still the fifth largest expense.”

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...and now for a brief advertising update